# lawyer
## English
### Alternative forms

* lawer (obsolete)

### Etymology

From Middle English lawier, lawyer, lawer, equivalent to law +‎ -yer.

### Pronunciation

* (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈlɔːjə(ɹ)/, /ˈlɔɪ.ə(ɹ)/
* (US, Northern and Western) IPA: /ˈlɔɪ.ɚ/
* Audio (US):(file)
* (US, Southern) IPA: /ˈlɔ.jɚ/
* Hyphenation: law‧yer
* Rhymes: -ɔɪ.ə(ɹ), -ɔː.jə(ɹ)
* Rhymes: -ɔɪə(ɹ)

### Noun

lawyer (plural lawyers)
* A professional person with a graduate law degree that qualifies for legal work (such as Juris Doctor)
* A professional person qualified (as by a law degree or bar exam) and authorized to practice law as an attorney-at-law, solicitor, advocate, barrister or equivalent, i.e. represent parties in lawsuits or trials and give legal advice.
** 1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter II, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:His forefathers had been, as a rule, professional men—physicians and lawyers; his grandfather died under the walls of Chapultepec Castle while twisting a tourniquet for a cursing dragoon; an uncle remained indefinitely at Malvern Hill; […].
    A lawyer's time and advice are his stock in trade. - aphorism often credited to Abraham Lincoln, but without attestation
* (by extension) A legal layman who argues points of law.
* (UK, colloquial) The burbot.
* (UK, dialect) The stem of a bramble.
* Any of various plants that have hooked thorns.
** A relative of the raspberry found in Australia and New Zealand, Rubus australis
*** 1881 April, George M. Thomson, “On the Fertilization of New Zealand Flowering Plants”, in Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute, volume 13, page 250:The species of Eugnomus are very partial to the lawyer (Rubus australis ) when in bloom.
*** 1885, New Zealand Journal of Science - Volume 2, page 417:In the lawyer (Rubus australis) a considerable differentiation has taken place. All the alllies of this plant (such as the true roses, brambles, rasps, &c.), exhibit a strong development of epidermal structures in the form of hooks, spines, or hairs, but in none are these structures so perfect as in our lawyer.
*** 1915, John Henderson, P. Marshall, Percy Gates Morgan, The Geology and Mineral Resources of the Reefton Subdivision, Westport and North Westland Division, page 6:A plant that is excessively troublesome in the localities where the native vegetation has been least disturbed is the “lawyer” (Rubus australis).
** Various species of Calamus, including Calamus australis, Calamus muelleri, Calamus obstruens, Calamus vitiensis, Calamus warburgii, and Calamus moti.
*** 1886, Edward Micklethwaite Curr, The Australian Race, page 427:Besides the bags and nets common throughout the continent, these tribes have water-bags, which they make of closely-plaited “lawyer” (Calamus Australis), and also of palm-leaf sewn with the sinews of animals.
*** 1901, Archibald James Campbell, Nests and Eggs of Australian Birds, page 267:The nest was a foot or two from the ground, and placed in a bunch of lawyer (Calamus ) canes.
*** 1905, W. J. Gordon, “Jackey Jackey”, in The Boy's Own Annual, volume 28, page 318:This lawyer (Calamus australis) is a climbing palm, throwing up shoots from its roots as thick as a man's finger and tough as wire, covered with sharp spines, and bearing much divided leaves, alternating with tendrils twenty feel long.
*** 1910 October, Sidney Wm. Jackson, “Additional Notes on Tooth-billed Bower-Bird (Scenopaeetes dentirostris) of North Queensland”, in The Emu: Official Organ of the Australasian Ornithologists' Union, volume 10, page 84:They were usually very neatly laid out under arching masses of the exasperating lawyer-palm vines ( Calamus moti and C. australis ), and consequently not too easy to examine.
*** 2014, Germaine Greer, White Beech: The Rainforest Years, page 171:Lawyer Vine (Calamus muelleri), also known as Hairy Mary and Wait-a-while, is actually a palm, that grows in long canes that loop and snake through the undergrowth.
*** 2022, E. J. Banfield, The Confessions of a Beachcomber:The trail of the lawyer vine (CALAMUS OBSTRUENS), with its leaf sheath and long tentacles bristling with incurved hooks, is over it all.
** A woody climbing rainforest vine, Flagellaria indica.
*** 2011, A. C. Haddon, W. H. R. Rivers, Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, page 89:The stems of the "lawyer vine" (Flagellaria indica), buz or buzi (W.), boz (E.), are used in house-building, tying fences, etc.

#### Synonyms

* advocate
* attorney
* counselor

#### Derived terms

* antilawyer
* barrack-room lawyer
* barracks lawyer
* barracks room lawyer
* bush lawyer
* canon lawyer
* common lawyer
* corporate lawyer
* criminal lawyer
* cyberlawyer
* defence lawyer
* defense lawyer
* jailhouse lawyer
* labour lawyer
* lake lawyer
* lawyerball
* lawyer cane
* lawyerdom
* lawyerese
* lawyeress
* lawyer foyer
* lawyering
* lawyerish
* lawyerism
* lawyerless
* lawyerlike
* lawyerling
* lawyerly
* lawyer-readable
* lawyership
* lawyerspeak
* lawyer-speak
* lawyer vine
* lawyery
* neurolawyer
* nonlawyer
* non-lawyer
* one-horse lawyer
* outlawyer
* Penang lawyer
* Philadelphia lawyer
* professional support lawyer
* robolawyer
* rules lawyer
* sea-lawyer
* sea lawyer
* sharia lawyer
* superlawyer
* underlawyer
* unlawyered

#### Translations

    The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

### Verb

lawyer (third-person singular simple present lawyers, present participle lawyering, simple past and past participle lawyered)
* (informal, intransitive) To practice law.
* (intransitive) To perform, or attempt to perform, the work of a lawyer.
* (intransitive) To make legalistic arguments.
* (informal, transitive) To barrage (a person) with questions in order to get them to admit something.
    You've been lawyered!

#### Related terms

* lawyer up

#### Translations
### See also

* barrister
* solicitor

### References

* ↑ Oxford English Dictionary. "Lawyer, n."

### Anagrams

* Rawley, warely, yawler

## Middle English
### Noun

lawyer
* Alternative form of lawier